With an office in Alexandria, Virginia, attorney William J. Kovatch, Jr. provides quality immigration law services to individuals and businesses. This blog explores recent developments in immigration law, from immigration reform to court cases affecting immigration issues. To put this experienced immigration lawyer to work for you, call now for an appointment: (703) 837-8832.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Today, Arlington Immigration Court
Judge Thomas Snow granted asylum to a woman from Honduras who was a victim of
domestic abuse.For a little over two
years, the woman suffered physical, mental and economic abuse at the hands of
her common law husband, who threatened to find her and kill her if she ever
attempted to leave.The woman was only
able to escape when a neighbor intervened to pull the husband off of the woman
as the husband was attempting to choke her after an argument over the husband’s
mistress.Taking the neighbor’s advice,
the woman made the treacherous journey through Guatemala and Mexico to the
United States.Once in the United
States, the woman was taken into custody by Border Patrol, and placed in
removal proceedings.

As counsel to the woman, we
submitted evidence demonstrating that Honduras is a deeply-rooted patriarchal
society, where women get their identities first from their fathers and then
from their husbands.For a single woman
living alone, access to credit and good jobs is virtually impossible.As a result, women become dependent on their
husbands, and are often treated like property and abused.The State Department, in its annual human
rights reports on Honduras, reports that rape and domestic abuse are
significant problems in Honduras, as is femicide, or the murder of a woman by
her significant other.In 2008, the
State Department cited statistics showing that 90% of femicides in Honduras
went unpunished.

Victims of domestic abuse receive
little help from governmental authorities.According to Claudia Herrmansdorfer of the Center for Women’s Rights in
Tegucigalpa, the police tend to treat domestic violence as an issue that should
be resolved by the couple, and do not intervene.Likewise, prosecutors tend not to bring cases
of domestic violence to court.This
means that women in an abusive relationship in Honduras receive little, if any,
protection from the government.

Asylum can be granted where an
applicant can show that she fears that she will be persecuted if returned to
her home country because of one of five protected categories:(1) political opinion; (2) race; (3)
religion; (4) nationality or (5) membership in a particular social group.For victims of domestic abuse, the difficulty
had been to fit the reason for the abuse into one of these five
categories.In 1999, the Board of
Immigration Appeals rejected an asylum application where the applicant claimed
to be part of a particular social group defined as “Guatemalan women intimately
involved with abusive Guatemalan male companions who believe that women are to
live under male dominance.”In 2001, the
Attorney General exercised his discretion to reverse the BIA’s decision, and
remand it back to Board for reconsideration.No published opinion has resulted from that remand.

The recent trend, however, has been
to grant asylum to victims of domestic abuse.In this case, both the Immigration Judge and the attorney for the
Department with Homeland Security agreed with us that the woman was part of a
particular social group defined as “Honduran women who are unable to leave
their domestic relationship.”Indeed,
the DHS attorney did not oppose the asylum application, allowing the
Immigration Court proceedings to run smoothly.The woman was not required to recount her emotional tale of abuse in
court, but was asked only to affirm the truthfulness of her asylum application
under oath.The DHS attorney also asked
questions of the woman to make sure that no statutory bars to asylum, such as
criminal and terrorist activities, applied in her case.

Having been granted asylum the woman
may now live and work in the United States legally.In one year, she may apply for permanent
residency status, which could eventually lead to U.S. citizenship.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

A bill, called the Immigration Innovation Act or I2, (I-Squared) has been introduced in Congress in an effort to expand the number of foreign workers who can obtain temporary visas to work for U.S. companies. The bill would expand the number of H-1B visas available each year on a sliding scale, depending on the demand by U.S. empoyers for such workers.

Each year, there are 65,000 temporary visas available for specialty workers. Another 20,000 visas are set aside specifically for workers who hold a U.S. master's degree. The temporary visas can eventually lead to permanent residency. They are often used for U.S. companies seeking to fill high-tech positions, although any job which requires a bachelor's degree may be able to qualify for the basis of an H-1B visa.

U.S. employers may apply for the H-1B visas up to six months before the visas are to take effect. The visas become available at the beginning of the fiscal year, or October 1. This means that an employer may submit an application as early as April 1. In times of an expanding economy, it is not uncommon for the cap of all 85,000 visas to to be met on the first day of filing.

At issue is what the definition of a "criminal alien" is. The easy cases are those convicted of crimes such as assault and battery and larceny. The article suggests, however, that the Administration has included in its definition of a "criminal alien" those who have convictions for minor traffic offenses, such as driving without a license.

To be clear, in Virginia, driving without a license is a misdemeanor, and can carry a jail sentence of no more than one year. However, undocumented aliens cannot obtain a driver's license in Virginia. This raises the question of whether driving without a license is on par with other crimes, such as larceny.

In the past, ICE has estimated that up to a quarter of its criminal deportations included aliens who had only traffic violations. ICE has not released information of how many of the criminal deportations of the most current year were due to minor traffic convictions.

While the article hints that ICE has been trolling DMV records, and deporting aliens who have nothing more than a traffic violation, the article also points out that there have been instances where ICE has refused to initiate deportation proceedings against aliens who were cited for driving without a license. The article mentions as an example an incident near Asheville, North Carolina where 15 individuals were arrested at a police checkpoint mostly for minor traffic violations, immigration officials ordered many of them released.

The article implies that there are quotas within the agency to maintain high numbers of criminal deportations, and that in orderto meet these goals there is pressure to initiate removal proceedings against those convicted of minor traffic offense.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The law firm of William J. Kovatch, Jr., Attorney at Law, PLLC is pleased to announce that we are now accepting credit and debit cards for payment. A small convenience fee of 3% will be applied to credit and debit card payments.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published the most recent statistics on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. As of January 17, 2013, USCIS had received 407,899 applications. Of those applications, 13,366 were initially rejected. This means that there was a problem with the application itself, such as missing documents or missing fees. Of the remaining 394,533 applications, 154,404 have been approved. USCIS does not release statistics on how many applications are denied. Therefore, it is not known whether the remaining 240,000 applications are still pending or have been denied.

USCIS also does not publish statistics on how long it takes to process the deferred action applications. From my experience, I can say that I have made applications in October which remain pending. y advice with respect to visa petitions has been to expect about six to eight months before receiving a decision. At this point, the applications I have made have not reached the six to eight month mark.

About Me

William J. Kovatch, Jr. is a lawyer practicing immigration law in the Northern Virginia and metropolitan Washington, DC area. With an office in Alexandria, he is conveniently located near the Immigration Court in Arlington, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office in Fairfax, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) Field Office in Fairfax. William handles all immigration matters: employment immigration, family immigration, asylum applications and removal/deportation proceedings.